Part 3

FOR each of the groups that participated in EDSA, the expectations, hopes and aspirations which motivated them were diverse. Thirty-one years, the survivors may now have a better grasp of the event and a better appreciation of whether these have been fulfilled in the light of current developments.

The Yellows- 2017

Some of us are no longer Yellows in 2017. Our perception of EDSA and our role in it runs counter to what is now being peddled, mostly by those of the recent past administration. For us, EDSA is not an Aquino family franchise, nor just a mere booting out of the Marcos family. And it is not a narrative of entitlements of two families.

For many of us, EDSA was a decades-long seething anger against poverty, injustice and the emerging rule of the oligarchy not only in the economy but throughout the political structures. These were long exemplified by the pre-martial law Liberal and Nacionalista political parties; same faces of a political coin that held sway over the lives of the masses of Filipinos through their brand of traditional politics.

The final capture of the color Yellow was consummated upon the serendipitous exquisitely timed demise of the EDSA icon when an opportunistic son rode on the people’s residual love and nostalgia to win power. Yellow from then on came to symbolize his own vengeful and exclusive “Daang Matuwid” regime. PNoy, in his brimming arrogance, tried to exact from the people who once took part in the EDSA revolution, a certain sense of loyalty and adulation similar to that shown his mother. He failed.

His double standards overshadowed his advocacy of transparent governance, and what we all witnessed was a man who used his power to inflict his wrath upon his political enemies. The economic policies that put the country in the international map, which in essence were inter-generational and a carryover from past administrations, were never properly attributed; in fact, his predecessor was incarcerated for the duration of his term in office.

But the last straw that broke the people’s trust was his refusal to apologize and take responsibility for the Mamasapano massacre that claimed the lives of 44 police commandos.

Some of these Yellows who perceived EDSA to be merely a victory over martial law forces were left disenchanted when the expected change in the status quo and the restructuring of the old order did not occur. And this too is the perception of mostly the millennials with their harsh judgment of EDSA as they have no personal connection to or collective memory of it. The disgruntled former Yellows and the millennials found a common cause in bringing about this elusive change – Ang Pagbabago! – exemplified by a maverick whose language resonated. They found their voice and a champion in DU30, our Davao mayor, whom they catapulted to the presidency running under two main campaign promises of drastic change: the elimination of the illegal drug menace and the restructuring of the government into a parliamentary-federal form.

The Marcos Loyalist Reds- 2017

The hundred yellow ribbons “round the old oak tree” may soon be covered by red ones as Marcos supporters have slowly inched their way to political consciousness in the past few years from their solid base in the Marcos homeland in the north. This resurgence can be attributed to the tolerance and naivete of President Fidel Ramos, a cousin, who allowed the return of the dictator’s remains under strict conditions agreed to by the Marcos family, but which they have reneged on, perhaps with the quiet acquiescence of the FVR administration. This paved the way for the complete rehabilitation of the family by PRRD who has admitted to his own father’s debt of gratitude to the father, Ferdinand, and his own fondness for the son, Bongbong. The son also did his part by demonstrating filial love, a trait much valued by Filipinos. On his run for the vice presidency, the Filipino millennial responded in kind. They are a powerful and versatile force that has clearly distorted the equation—partially alienating the Yellows.

The Military- 2017

Many of the major players have long been put to pasture and some tucked into the recesses of the bureaucracy. But the institution has a long collective memory and it has left behind what could be a dangerous legacy; they were made the protector of a dictatorship and have tasted the license of shared power. And they applied that newfound prerogative a decade and a half later in a caricature of EDSA II, that small original faction of 1986 who once broke away from the traditional mainstream culture with convoluted motivations to fight a common nemesis. EDSA will be a reminder of how their force can either be a tool for hegemony or freedom. And that the military has to be guided by strong moral principles and must equip themselves with a discerning mind to only use their force to serve the people.

DU30’s Red, White & Blue

This clinched-fist symbol of defiance and rejection of the status quo is the emblem of those who populate this group who are mostly the vocal millennials – those who have barely a memory of EDSA 1986 and no experience of the circumstances, events and upheavals that led to it. Most were not even born yet at the onset of the Marcos regime and therefore have no awareness of the piquancy of the period. They were among the first to march the streets of EDSA during the 2017 commemoration. They could have been properly schooled on the history of the EDSA revolution, what dictatorship feels like and how their forefathers fought it. However, the passion and flavor of conflict cannot be imparted. They may have understood the dangers of an iron-fisted leader such as Duterte, but on the other hand, the man speaks their language of defiance of the old order. And his is the only game in town!

The millennials are a force to reckon with and they could be the gamechanger. They have the vigor, the ideas and technology to rally behind a certain political ideology, an advocacy or a cause. But only when properly motivated can they begin to fulfill the promise of their generation which is congruent to the hopes of the majority of the EDSA participants – to free the Filipino from the shackles of poverty, injustice and the grasp of the oligarchy and the traditional practices of politics.

Perhaps it needed the passing of a generation—31years from EDSA—for a new set of players to emerge to fulfill the important aspirations, expectations and hopes of EDSA, without being burdened by the conflicts and biases that brought about that same EDSA.

Perhaps the colors, Yellow and Red, will lose their significance and everything negative attached to them. Perhaps, the rise of a leader who was himself a product of EDSA but tried to heal its wounds is what is needed in this time and age.

 

I WROTE last week in Part I of this series: “Today … 31 years after, I am again putting on paper my thoughts, a little bit more appreciative and perhaps a little bit more dispassionate about the events that transpired – given the distance of years and the dissipation of emotions and passion that propelled us then to bring about this ‘revolution’.”

My children, Lara and Carlo, then 12 and 8 years, respectively, may only have a vague idea of the significance of the four-day events in February of 1986; though they were certainly affected by the antecedents over the years leading towards these events. We all lived in Davao during the repressive Marcos regime and saw the rise of the communists in the city making it their “laboratory”.

We lived in the outskirts of the city near the infamous Buhangin circumferential-diversion road where “salvaged bodies” were disposed of. They certainly saw the many bodies covered with newspapers during our sorties downtown.

My wife Sylvia and I tried to protect them from these realities. Several times she had to gather the kids from their rooms and sleep in the master bedroom comforting them when the intermittent gunfire from around the area came dangerously close.

I was mostly away from home from the late 1970s to 1986, contributing my share in the struggle against the dictatorship. My absences and the strain inflicted on my family I’d like to think have long been recompensed, perhaps by my hopes then that things would revert to normalcy upon the “restoration of democracy” by EDSA.

And this is the point at issue. I was both wrong and right!

I was right in the sense that a certain amount of normalcy has descended on my personal life. I was recruited to President Cory’s government and relocated my household to Manila where we were again an intact family until the children came of age and “flew the coop,” so to speak.

I was wrong on my expectations about the “restoration of democracy”. What was restored came with it too the re-establishment of the rule of an oligarchy and the continued perpetuation of traditional politics, albeit with a new set of personalities.

Many of us in the decades-long struggle for real democracy from the mid-1960s, adherents of a parliamentary-federal structure of government, were enthusiastic in supporting Cory Aquino as she was our symbol in the fight against the repressive dictatorship. We understood that she was from the elite and her values were therefore of those of her class but we were hopeful that she would transcend these with the outpouring of love and adulation shown by the masses–whose values were not congruent with hers.

A few of us recruited to her administration implored her to continue to rule under the Revolutionary Constitution to give herself more time to dismantle not only the martial law structures but the unitary system of government which we then and still now believe perverted the principles of democratic governance. We were no match for the ruling class. Cory surrendered her prerogatives to real socio-economic-political reforms by rejecting the people’s gift—the 1986 Freedom Constitution. She then proceeded to embed her dogmas in her 1987 Constitution.

This is the Constitution guarded zealously by her son, PNoy, that President Duterte and we, the Centrist Democratic Party (CDP), the PDP-Laban and the majority of the downtrodden Filipinos want to replace with a federal-parliamentary system and a social market economy (SOME).

Those were our expectations. But what were the expectations, then and perhaps now, of the others who participated at EDSA in February of 1986? First, let us identify the dramatis personae.

The Yellows 1986

We were all “Yellows” then, as this was the color we wore, after the assassination of Ninoy, symbolizing our protest against this dastardly act and our struggle to boot out the dictator Marcos from power and institute real reforms. The masses that congregated at Edsa were a motley crowd of Filipinos, from all walks of life—from the ordinary folk, some members of the elite and some of the oligarchic families dispossessed by the Marcos cronies; members of religious groups, Islam and Christians, prominently headed by Cardinal Sin and the Catholics. We all had disparate motives but were welded together by a pent-up anger against the Marcos family.

The Military

This was not a homogeneous group. The EDSA uprising was precipitated by a small breakaway group of mostly mid-level officers of the Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM) and their patron, Defense Secretary Enrile, whose plan for a putsch was exposed and nipped in the bud. It was the timely reinforcements of Gen. Ramos and his PC-INP and allies in the Army and Air Force that gave precious time for Cardinal Sin’s army to gather the people to stop the tanks and heavy artillery of Gen. Ver and saved the day. The putschists never did forgive the Yellows for snatching victory from the jaws of defeat—for saving their skin. Their revenge fell upon President Cory, who crushed seven coup attempts during her years in office.

The ‘Reds’

These were the people, foremost among which was the Kilusan ng Bagong Lipunan (KBL), who supported the Marcos regime and his family sucking the country dry. We the “Yellows” then booted him out–for a time. But now his minions are back and his family is politically reinstated.

(Part 3 of this article will appear next Thursday, March 9.)

THE biggest opportunity we missed because of the EDSA uprising, and Corazon Aquino’s assumption to power because of that political upheaval, was our failure to shift toward a parliamentary system. (Its most important feature is that the head of government is elected not through people’s direct votes, but through their representatives, i.e. the Parliament to which the head is accountable.)

Cory, I had learned years after the 1987 drafting and adoption of the Constitution, told those most loyal to her in the Constitutional Commission—all of whom she appointed—that of all proposals, it was the one proposing a change to a parliamentary system that she hated.

Why? Simply because a parliamentary system, would seem like her recognition as correct Marcos’ move to create a single-chamber legislative body called the Batasan Pambansa, which was ordered set up under Marcos’ 1973 Constitution. (She misunderstood it; it was actually still a presidential system, with a unicameral legislature and a “Prime Minister,” but with little powers.)

It is such a tragedy that our present political system wasn’t really a consensus among members of the commission that drafted the Constitution. The 1987 Constitution was approved only by a very slim margin of two votes.

There were several reports that Cory was more interested in having a new Constitution as soon as possible, whatever its content was, since her revolutionary government under a “Freedom Constitution” (which she alone decreed) was, almost by nature, a legally and politically fragile one.

The four-month period for the information campaign was not only too short, but because at the time, the media was a Cory media, there was actually little national discussions on the provisions of the proposed Constitution. With her popularity and power then, most political leaders backed what Cory wanted.

Debate endless

While a debate on which system is better, presidential or parliament, would be endless, I submit we simply look at what has worked in the world.

We are one of the very few countries in Asia, which maintain a system in which the people directly choose the President, who is both head of state and government. Our system hasn’t even been “debugged” in the way that of the US had been, with such refinements and checks as the system of electoral colleges, primaries, a strong party system, and one-on-debates among presidential contenders. Yet, even in the US, Donald Trump’s victory, based on his skill in demagoguery and appeal to American working class’ frustrations, is another proof of the fatal weaknesses of a presidential system.

Because of the presidential system that was restored, the dictator’s widow, Imelda Marcos could even have become Philippine President, if her husband’s crony Eduardo Cojuangco, who insisted he was Marcos’ legitimate heir, had not split the pro-Marcos votes. (Imelda’s and Cojuangco’s votes in the 1992 election totaled 28 percent of the ballots, more than Fidel Ramos’ 24 percent.)

We’ve had a presidential system since the nation’s birth, with the 14-year dictatorship as a hiatus, and we are in a mess. It was the presidential system in fact which led to the quagmire of the late 1960s that encouraged Marcos to impose martial law. On the other hand, our neighbors with parliamentary systems—such as Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand—have had parliamentary systems, and have overtaken us in terms of economic development.

Direct voting sounds so democratic. In reality, it has been one of the biggest hoaxes of modern society. It is usually the political and economic elites and the mass media which determine whom the masses will vote, without such a leader going through the rigorous process of being tested and judged by his peers. Such pure democracy really works only in a community of a few thousand voters, without any mass media to mediate reality for them.

Movie persona

Thus, the masses voted for a President Joseph Estrada whose movie persona as a working-class hero the people thought they were voting to office. In reality, they voted for a drunkard and a libertine who saw nothing wrong in amassing billions from jueteng, rigging the stock market, and skimming off tobacco taxes.

But at least Estrada had two decades of experience as a town mayor and then senator. But because of the presidential system, and the features of a mass media- dominated modern society in which reality and illusion are mixed, the country nearly had as President Fernando Poe Jr., an aging actor with zero experience in government, whose fairy-tale persona as a hero brandishing a magic sword in a never-never land Filipinos quite foolishly thought they were voting for.

Last elections, if a phenomenon called Duterte had not emerged and there wasn’t a phenomenon as computerized voting, a Balikbayan that swore allegiance to the US, and totally without any experience in government would have become President—merely because she was Poe’s daughter.

It is the same presidential system which made a President out of a spoiled unico hijo who practically had not worked a single day in his life, whose performance in Congress had been mediocre that he was largely ignored by his peers, but whom the masses voted for in sympathy with the death of his mother. A superstitious people also foolishly thought the spirits of the anti-dictatorship martyr and his widow, the heroine of democracy, would be possessing B.S. Aquino, or from the beyond would be whispering to him how to run government.

Of course, an argument that has only recently emerged would be that Rodrigo Duterte would never have become the country’s chief executive if not through a presidential system. He touched a raw nerve among Filipinos, who directly voted for him, and allowed him to win by a landslide. Duterte, without the skills of a horse-trading politician and really an outsider from the national political class, would not have been voted as primus inter pares, i.e. prime minister, by a parliament.

But Duterte is a fluke, a sui generis (one of its kind), a lucky break for our unlucky country, in that he has mass charisma, a populist, while he seems–so far–to be committed to, and having the balls for, radically changing our society.

The other proposal for a different political system, federalism would worsen our weak sense of nationalism, and would even eventually lead to the extinction of the notion of a “Filipino”. Under that system, Ilokanos would deepen their identification as “Ilokanos” rather than Filipinos; Cebuanos as Cebuanos; Warays as Warays; Mindanaoans as Mindanaoans; with Metro Manilans most probably developing a crazy identification as “citizens of the world.”

We should move first towards a parliamentary system, and if that doesn’t work either, it would be parliament that could be in a better position to decide on moving towards a federalist nation, and implement it with the least disruption.

With his immense popularity and huge political capital, Duterte can, if he moves fast enough, move us towards a parliamentary system. That could be his greatest legacy, a hundred times more important than his war against illegal drugs.

THERE are several factors that explain our people’s weak sense of nationalism, among them: a foreign-descended ruling class that doesn’t identify with the mostly ethnic Malay masses; the US colonizers’ successful brainwashing of the elite and the middle class that they are America’s little brown brothers, resulting in massive migration to America; and the ideological hegemony of neoliberal dogma that modern man is, and must be, global citizens and no longer citizens of a nation.

However, the toppling of Marcos in 1986, glorified as a People Power Revolution, accentuated these factors, and may even in fact have killed Filipinos’ sense of nationalism.

Nationalism is essentially the belief (and intellectual conclusion) that in this day and age, the most important organization a human is a member of is not the family and clan, not the corporation, not the party, not even the church. Rather it is this modern association we call the nation. Whether we and our descendants (who stay here) live in misery or happiness, depends on how well that organization–the nation–is run.

In turn, how well it is run to a great extent depends on its unity, the strength of its members’ feeling of “togetherness”.

Much of the strength of nationalism in Asian countries that led to their economic prosperity in the post-war era was ironically the result of the Cold War, the real or perceived threat by the Soviets and China to take over countries using the communist party proxies: South Korea against the then USSR- and then China-controlled North; Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia against the threat of a communist takeover in the 1960s; Kuomintang-controlled Taiwan against the communist victors in the mainland. There was a reverse phenomenon though: Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos steeled their nationalism in their heroic fight against the US imperialists.

We didn’t have in the modern era such episodes on the same scale—the Soviet-backed Huk rebellion the 1950s lasted only a few years—when we had to unite or perish.

Worse, the EDSA uprising worsened our divisions, thereby weakening our people’s nationalism.

Despite the lip service to the power of the people as the force behind EDSA, the brainwashing was really that it was due to the heroism of a few individuals and the anti-Marcos clans: Ninoy and Cory Aquino, Fidel V. Ramos, and Juan Ponce Enrile (maybe even Gregorio Honasan who lost his heroic shine though when he went against Cory) as well as the heroic Lopez and Osmeña oligarchs.

Message drummed

The message had been drummed into Filipinos’ minds that without the heroism of these individuals, there wouldn’t have been an EDSA.

Such glorification of these “heroes” obviously isn’t too convincing. So, an additional, even more important, explanation was necessary, easily believed by a superstitious Catholic nation: It was Mama Mary who mobilized Cardinal Sin and the hundreds of nuns carrying Virgin Mary statuettes.

She was responsible for the liberation of the Philippines from dictatorship. Indeed, we are so blessed that while the Mother of God wouldn’t intervene in the killing of seven million Jews in the Holocaust, the genocide of one million Indonesians by Suharto’s forces, the hundreds of millions killed in the wars and famines in Asia and Africa in the modern era, she made sure the EDSA uprising was almost bloodless.

The monument to the EDSA revolt is not that one near Camp Aguinaldo built in 1993 by renowned sculptor the late Eduardo Castrillo, which shows anonymous demonstrators of the uprising, led by Lady Freedom.

It is the ”EDSA Shrine” fronting the Robinson’s mall, with its huge statue of the Virgin Mary, which Cardinal Sin ordered built in 1989.

This of course propagates in modern form the mammoth deception our Spanish colonizers promoted, which made the natives docile, allowing them to rule the country for four centuries.

This is the fiction that our togetherness as a people is because of our membership in a Kingdom of God, with His proxy in this temporal world, the Catholic Church. The lie has even been smuggled into our language: “sambayanan” which is a word for “the whole nation. It originally was the “Samba ng Bayan,” meaning “Worship by the People,” which is what the Spanish friars called the weekly assembly of the natives to hear mass in the town (bayan), which grew around the church, constructed through the natives’ unpaid labor and materials. (The church also functioned as a fortification, impenetrable to raiding Moros or rebelling indios.)

EDSA thus propagates the fiction that our togetherness as a people is not because we have created a nation-state, but because we are members of a Church, and its Goddess was even responsible for toppling the dictator. Any religious fiction requires a Devil since without a Satan it is really difficult for people to believe in a God. In the EDSA case, the Devil is Marcos.

Denial of the nation

The denial of the nation by EDSA and its believers is very well demonstrated by its symbol: the Yellow Ribbon, the idea of Cory’s PR advisers from the US and derived from an American folk song about a convict returning to his hometown.

Under Cory, Ramos, and Noynoy Aquino, the Philippine flag—which is the symbol of our nation—has been relegated as a secondary banner: the nation has been dismissed as unimportant.

EDSA rulers and proponents have rejected the necessity of uniting the nation, and healing the wounds of the past. They even refuse to accept the indisputable fact, proven by Bongbong Marcos’ victory—that is, if he had not been cheated in the 2016 vice-presidential race–that vast swathes of the country, especially the Ilocano-speaking provinces, believe that while he may have had his mistakes, even major ones, with his biggest error his refusal to step down when he became terminally ill, Marcos was in the main a good President.

With the country ruled by three Yellow Presidents — Cory, Ramos, and Aquino III in 18 of the past 30 years, who have all propagated the false EDSA spirit, our country remains divided, and Filipinos’ nationalism on the brink of extinction.

This is in contrast to what happened in many nationalistic nations that toppled strongmen.

Park Chung-hee ruled South Korea for 17 years until his assassination in 1979. Suharto, after ruling Indonesia for 33 years, fell in 1998 in the wake of massive student demonstrations. Lech Walesa during a visit to the Philippines told Corazon Aquino that the movement that overthrew the communists in Poland in 1989 was “inspired” by the People Power uprising she led in 1986. Nicolae Ceaușescu, who ruled Romania with an iron fist for 42 years, fell in 1989 and was even executed, together with his wife.

No EDSA monuments

Do any of these countries have their versions of an EDSA monument and a holiday in which they celebrate the downfall of their strongmen, who are demonized? No.

Even the US doesn’t celebrate the Union’s victory in the Civil War, and Americans do not demonize heroes of the Confederacy such as President Jefferson Davies and its famous generals, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The Socialist Republic of Vietnam refers to its victory over the US-backed regime in the South simply as “National Reunification Day.”

Why don’t these very nationalistic countries have celebrations such as our EDSA?

Because they know that for a country to be strong, it has to be united, and it can only be united if it moves on, and puts aside what divided it in the past. These nations have learned to just let the historians judge their fallen strongmen, and not to demonize them, as the Yellow Cult continues to do so. The leaders of Russia and China today have let historians write books about their ruthless strongmen Stalin and Mao Zedong, rather than demonizing them in state events—because doing so would only be divisive of their nations.

Such a stance is necessary for building the nation since these dictators, precisely because they managed to rule as strongmen for years, represented major sections of the nation.

It is time, and it is necessary for us to develop our nationalism and stop these divisive EDSA celebrations.

Today, as the Duterte government has decided to “tone down” the celebration of what was once a glorious part of contemporary Philippine history, I am reprinting an essay which I wrote in 2009, 23 years after the events of February 1986 when we toppled the Marcos regime and tried to usher in a new democratic paradigm. Before the forces that now want to make the EDSA Revolution irrelevant could succeed, I am recounting those four days of February, hoping to in some way rekindle the fires of passion now deeply buried in the recesses of the collective memories of our people; preventing perhaps the muting of its significance and relegating these legitimate struggles against a dictatorship as mere historical footnote.

Today therefore, 31 years after, I am again putting on paper my thoughts, a little bit more appreciative and perhaps a little bit more dispassionate on the events that transpired – given the distance of years and the dissipation of emotions and passion that propelled us then to bring about this “revolution”. This will appear in Part 2 of this series. Meantime…

Davao City, January 2009

I WAS not at EDSA. There was no EDSA in Davao City. But I was part of the decades-long political struggle that eventually brought about the upheaval during those heady four days in February 1986, now known worldwide as the EDSA People Power Revolution.

This is not a tome or even an attempt at a thesis examining the actual events leading towards the culmination of decades of a seething political cauldron. This is a simple recounting from personal memory to answer an age-old conundrum “…where were you when it happened?” Perhaps this is also a way of situating one’s role in the great episodes of the times. We hanker to be part of the momentous movements of history and even begin to presume that we may indeed have been a major participant thereof—when in fact, we simply may have taken on a minor role—bit players in an unfolding drama on the world stage. But it is this trifling part, when multiplied by the thousands that makes the involvement of each of us anywhere within the stream of events singularly significant. In this way, our collective action becomes history-making. We need not have been (present physically) at EDSA—we were the spirit of EDSA.

A lapse of 23 years is a long time to overcome to rummage through one’s memories of those days. The haze and the cobwebs are layered through the years, locking some details perhaps never to resurface.

It was around the second week of February 1986 when I was called for a meeting at the Cojuangco building in Makati initiated by Peping Cojuangco to help plan out the sorties of Cory to the provinces. I was then working and living in Makati since 1983, after Ninoy’s assassination, and was an active functionary of the PDP-Laban. The sorties were designed to get Cory to major cities in the country to protest the massive cheating by Marcos at the February 7 snap presidential election.

In Davao, together with the late Zaf Respicio and Dodo Cagas (PDP-Laban members of the Batasang Pambansa), we helped coordinate Cory’s planned visit to the city on Sunday, February 23. She was to fly in from Cebu.

The late Chito Ayala, the leader of the Yellow Friday Movement in Davao, together with Paul Dominguez and the late Rey Teves, were the point men in this southern city. They handled all the details for the sortie, from the construction of the stage to providing local security for Cory and the multitudes we expected to attend. She was to stay at Chito’s house in Matina.

On Friday, February 20, the late Monching Mitra, Cory’s advance man, flew in to check the preparations. After a press interview in one of our radio stations, I drove him to the airport to catch a plane to Cebu where Cory was scheduled to attend a massive rally at Fuente Osmeña.

It was on February 22, Saturday, while we were all meeting at Chito’s house to finalize details of her visit, when word began to filter through about “some movement” going on in Manila. There was a vague rumor of a possible coup circulating among the members of the Manila press who were now in Davao to await Cory’s arrival. There was nothing yet on TV and radio hinting of a gathering cloud of a political tempest.

By early evening, Chito and Teddyboy Locsin, who accompanied the members of the Manila press, huddled with us to dissect the implications of the bizarre theater suddenly presented to a global audience, the first act of which was the press conference of Enrile and Ramos on their “breakaway” from Marcos.

Our gut feeling then was that we were in a maelstrom of a life-altering political convulsion, yet we were in a quandary as to what we local people could do. Our immediate concern was how to protect Cory (whom we thought was still flying in to Davao from Cebu) from the Marcos minions.

Somehow, an idea began to float about providing not only sanctuary to Cory in Davao but organizing an armed resistance against the Marcos regime. Mindanao was so vast an area that it was possible to create a revolutionary government headed by Cory. We looked upon Chito Ayala to bring this to the attention of Cory in Cebu, but by this time she was incommunicado.

The last detail of informal talks at Chito’s house before we broke off was where to get a private plane for Teddyboy and the media to fly to Cebu or Manila.

February 23. The streets of Davao were almost deserted as the residents were glued to their radios tuned in to either Radio Bombo or Radio Veritas. It was an emotional roller- coaster ride for us from hope to despair and back again, depending on how we perceived the rebels, under Ramos, were faring vis-a-vis Ver’s loyalists.

We, the opposition to the Marcos regime and identified with Cory, were by now used to marching in the streets and veterans at tweaking our noses at the dictator. But this development in the capital caught us unprepared for anything. We didn’t know what to do but wait for an outcome—any outcome. The waiting was excruciating.

Every bit of information, good or bad, helpful or not, filtering to us in Davao outside of what we heard on the radio, was instantly passed on to like-minded Davao residents. Oh, how we yearned to be in the center of things joining hands with the populace now gathering at EDSA.

The evening of this day was almost unbearable to us. The fear that our side was losing drained us of emotion. Our anguish was heightened by our inability to simply be there at EDSA.

February 24. The late June Keithley’s Radio Bandido appearing after midnight was as electrifying as any to lift up our spirits. We devoured every bit of news. The defection of Sotelo’s helicopters to Camp Crame later that morning stunned us to tears. A change in fortune was on our side.

But the declaration of Marcos later that morning that he would fight to the finish blunted our rising euphoria. The rest of the day was a cacophony of bits and pieces of news, hearsay and “intelligence reports”.

In our growing despair, we prayed. My wife Sylvia and I fell on our knees, beside our children Lara and Carlo, who were asleep.

February 25. God must have heard our prayers and surely the pleadings of the hosts of Filipinos at EDSA and throughout the country and the world. In the capital city, priest, nuns, and seminarians had been storming the ramparts of heaven.

That evening, Rey Teves, Cesar Ledesma, the late Cesar Decena, and Cris Lanorias congregated at my house for dinner. Two Presidents had been inaugurated that day: Cory at the Club Filipino and Marcos in Malacañang.

When reports came out that Marcos had left the Palace, Davao residents ran out of their houses and flooded the streets. We were honking our cars in impromptu caravans all around the metropolis and met up at the San Pedro Park in front of the City Hall.

A new day had begun.

(Part 2 of this article will appear next Thursday, March 2.)

The Senate is preparing to take up the proposed grant of emergency powers to the President to address the worsening traffic situation in Metro Manila and other major urban areas.

Sen. Grace Poe, chairperson of the Senate committee on public services, said a public hearing would be held as soon as possible to get the views of all stakeholders on the proposed grant of emergency powers.

Thirty years after EDSA 1 and indeed the revolution is still incomplete. One hundred fifteen years after the anti-colonial war loss to the US may find us independent but with a governance structure that bears all the hallmarks of a colonial government if viewed from by a Filipino outside Metro Manila.

It is so lamentable that while our Asean neighbors and the rest of the world are steadily climbing up the economic ladder and benefiting from growing political maturity, we in the Philippines have again to go through a hotly contested, divisive political exercise that seems to have brought out the worst in us and set us back as a people. Another revolution, peaceful or violent, is bruited about as a necessary evil or as a possible offshoot of the heated collision of views and interests engendered by this year’s elections.